Nearly 500 complaints were made to the council in the last year regarding loud music being played by neighbours in North East Lincolnshire.

Altogether North East Lincolnshire Council received 884 domestic noise complaints from local residents between July 2016 and July this year, with 499 cases of loud music, 226 cases of loud animals and dogs barking and another 119 comprising of DIY, alarms and other sources.

The figures were released as the council announced it is planning a shake-up of how it enforces domestic noise violations, hoping to move towards a system that will no longer require an out of hours service, and take a similar approach to how it polices commercial noise pollution.

The proposals, which if approved will go for further scrutiny, would see an increased emphasis on education prior to enforcement action based on sound information and evidence gathering.

There have been almost 500 complaints about loud music in North East Lincolnshire in just one year.

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Currently the council responds to domestic noise complaints with an officer visiting the scene of an incident and attempting to monitor the excessive noise in person.

While the council acknowledges that this system is popular among residents, it feels that this approach is "resource intensive" and does not result in long term outcomes and does not prioritise the most serious complaints.

If approved the new proposals would mean that complainants would have to monitor and provide evidence of the noise problem to the council themselves, with officers then planning overtime or making alterations to their working schedule in order to visit the offending property to see if the problem persists.

The council believes that the proposals will foster strong relationships between the community, elected members and council officers and will enable the most serious noise issues to be addressed as a priority so meeting localised need and achieving improved outcomes.

The council could change the way it enforces noise pollution.

It has also stated that perpetrators of noise pollution have become aware of council working hours and tailor their noise making around those times saying: "Feedback suggests that perpetrators of noise nuisance have become familiar with the current weekend working coverage offered by the service, so that noise nuisance occurs when it is known that the current service is not operational and will not provide an immediate response.

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"The change to planned, intelligence led targeted enforcement visits out of hours will not be predictable by noise offenders and so is more likely to be witnessed and could have a stronger deterrent effect and better outcome for local residents."

The council also believes that changing these services will allow them to focus on other high priority issues in the wake of the new waste collection roll-out.

A decision is set to be made at the next meeting of the North East Lincolnshire Council Cabinet on Wednesday, October 25 in the Town Hall.